Effect of Emotions on Cognitive Processes: Are Proficient Decision-Makers Inoculated Against the Influence of Affective States?

Introduction: Eventhough several studies has shed light on the effect of emotions on cognitive processes such as decision-making, research on naturalistic decision making has so far been virtually silent on the issue of emotions. Thus, the aim of the present research was to investigate how affect states influence the performance of a group of proficient decision-makers, police officers, in the ability to detect armed targets. Method: Two groups of subjects, civilians and police officers, where presented with a First Person Shooting Task. Pictorial stimuli were presented before the task to elicit specific emotions and to investigate the effect on particpants’ performance confronting their results. Results and discussion: Whereas police officers resoulted able to better control the effect of arousing stimuli and negative affect states than civilians, their latencies where longer, a strategy that could be dangerous and resulting in becoming the victim in an hypothetical shooting incident.